Jobs to be done in plain terms
What a job is
In the jobs-to-be-done approach, a job is the progress someone wants to make in a particular situation. People “hire” a product to make that progress. The focus moves from who the person is to what they are trying to achieve.
This differs from demographics and many personas, which describe attributes such as age or job title. Two people with different attributes may share the same job, and one person may have several different jobs.
Write a job statement
A common format is:
When [situation], I want to [motivation], so I can [expected outcome].
Example 1
When I am travelling and my plans change, I want to see my booking quickly, so I can decide what to do next.
Example 2
When a new month starts, I want to see what I spent, so I can adjust my budget.
These are generic examples of the format. Notice that they describe a situation and an outcome, not a screen or a feature.
Find the job in interviews
Jobs often show up as a struggle with the current solution. Ask people to describe the last time they tried to achieve something and what they did.
- What was happening just before they looked for a solution?
- What did they use, and what was frustrating or slow?
- What workarounds did they invent?
- What would success look like for them?
Use jobs to prioritise
List the jobs your product serves and ask, for each feature idea, which job it helps and how much. Features that serve no important job are candidates to cut or postpone. Jobs where the current solution is clearly struggling are promising places to invest.
Describe the situation and the progress, and leave the solution out of the statement.
Keeping jobs useful
A job statement is only helpful if it guides decisions. A few checks keep statements practical.
- Solution-free: “Open the app” is a step, not a job. The job is the reason behind the step.
- Specific to a situation: the same person wants different progress in different contexts.
- Grounded in evidence: base statements on what people said and did, not on guesses.
- Stable over time: technology changes quickly, while the underlying progress people seek changes slowly.
Jobs also have emotional and social sides, such as feeling in control or being seen as organised. Include them when interviews show they matter.
This guide was drafted with AI assistance from public standards and references. For the exact wording of a standard, use the sources listed above.